Shockholm
by Indigo2831
Summary: Tag to 8.23, "Sacrifice." The angels have fallen. Cas has vanished. Sam is dying. The lengths Dean will go to save his little brother scares even him.
1. Prologue

**Hi! Back again! I'm a writing fool these days. This is my SEASON 8 BIG BANG!11 *throws confetti* *bangs gong* I've been working on it for awhile, and I LOVE IT because it has a lot of everything: love, hurt/comfort, brotherly bonding, suspense. It also very different than anything I've written because most of the story is told from the perspective of an outsider. Please let me know what you think. **

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**Prologue**

There were two things that Dean Winchester knew with unwavering, rock-solid certainty: no matter how bad things were, they could always get worse and somehow all life would always lead to him holding his stricken brother in the mud.

Angels fell like burning rain, streaking through the sky in plumes of silver and gold, and crash-landed like rogue meteors. But Dean didn't care about angels or Heaven or even a half-cured King of Hades chained up in the derelict church. All that mattered was Sam, his jeans splattered with mud, his skin a silvery white, his eyes bulging from pain. Even in the low light, Dean could see Sam's pulse throbbing in his neck, feel his lungs stutter over shallow, puny breaths. Minutes ago, Sam had been arguing for his own death, and it looked bleakly obvious that his macabre wish may be answered.

Dean was sickened by the thought, and the fact that his brother was once again suffering because he thought sacrificing himself would make him worthy and pure.

He took Sam's hand and pressed it against his own stampeding heart. Because Dean had power of his own. It wasn't forged by demons or God's librarian, but by blood and family and love. Sam would live even if powered by Dean alone. "Just breathe, Sam. Like me, okay?" Dean urged. "You have to let it go, and just breathe. For me."

Sam's hand spasmed before it dug into Dean's chest, hard enough to bruise and maybe even bleed. His shoulders ground back against the car, back arching as he tried to inhale. The resulting sound was an ugly, dragging wheeze that pried open Sam's mouth and corded his neck. "You're doing great, Sam, just…a few more…"

An angel slammed into the ground a mere feet away, the Impala shuddered on its shocks from the impact. Dean shielded Sam as mud and tree branches and sparks shot out around them like divine shrapnel. "Time to bail, dude."

The back door opened with a fling and glide, and he heaved his hulk of a brother up and in the passenger seat of the Impala, and out of the rain. Sam was soaked and dirty and shaking, but he was still breathing. Dean stuffed his long legs in the footwell. "You keep it up, Sam, nice and easy. I'm going to fix this, little brother."

The steady grumble of the Impala's engine was a welcome comfort.

Instincts and desperation had him squatting in an abandoned motel miles from the nearest hospital. He settled Sam on the saggy mattress, bundling him in a sleeping bag. Sam's breathing was better, and the pain had seemingly minimalized, his brother was still half-conscious, colorless and whimpering. Dean threw the cobwebbed pillows on the floor and sat on the bed. Sam needed more help than he could give him; Dean needed supplies at the very least. "Sammy, hey..." he called, shaking him firmly. Sam's eyes barely opened, but they found Dean with unerring precision. "I need to go get you help, okay? I know you're tired and you feel like crap, but I need you to stay awake. Do you hear me, Sam? You have to stay here."

His brother's lips moved, forming words without sound. Dean pressed his ear against them, and his resolve crumbled when he heard the cracked, raw plea. "...hurry...Dean...I can't...it's in me...'n can't fight it..."

He tucked Sam's cell phone in the grip of his fingers, gnarled by pain, and gently coaxed a few belts of whisky into him. "I promise I'll bring back better medicine than rotgut," he smiled.

His face twisted and this throat burned he realized that the last image of his brother could be of him curled up in a dirty motel room, whimpering out his agony. He cupped his cheek, bending down to press his forehead to Sam's. "Wherever you go, kid, just remember that I'm followin'. You can do this, Sammy. I need you to do this for me."

Leaving him was gut-wrenching, but Dean scrubbed his face clean. He had work to do.

There was nothing more dangerous or more effective than Dean Winchester who stood to lose everything. While the falling angels made for a troublesome commute to the hospital, the chaos and injuries they'd caused were the perfect diversion. Within twenty minutes, he'd liberated a trunkful of gear from an unsupervised ambulance. Even as he loaded everything from vials of morphine to suture kits to the portable defibrillator into the car, he knew it wasn't enough. The power of the trials was tearing Sam apart at the molecular level, according to Cas, and a few fancy band-aids wouldn't remedy that. Unsettled and anxious, Dean lapped the hospital.

A dark idea dawned as he stopped at the crosswalk to let a group of nurses dart across in the rain.

He drove slowly as the idea moved from crazy and reckless to crucial and doable, especially when a lone nurse ventured down a different path towards the bar. She was petite, wearing a magenta hoodie over her navy blue scrubs. She flipped the hood over her long, wavy hair before ducking into an alley and into a bar.

Dean parked, gripping the wheel for a beat before climbing out into the rain. "Forgive me," he said as he stepped into the rain.

It was a twisted comfort knowing his prayer would go unheard.

_TBC_


	2. Sorry For Snatching

**WOW. The response has been incredible! I'll respond to all the feedback personally, I wanted to give everyone a blanket thank you! I haven't been as confident in my writing lately, so this is definitely a boost for my ego! As a thank you, here is a supersized chapter. Please let me know what you think! **

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**Chapter One**

Adele Wade never trusted anything that seemed too good to be true.

When she was awarded a prestigious medical fellowship in Chicago, that niggling little voice in the back of her head set off alarm bells that it would dissolve into a disaster. And it had. In just her first month, she'd been kicked twice, bitten once, her apartment had flooded before she'd gotten renter's insurance was finalized, and the fellowship's funds ran out in six months leaving her jobless with an apartment fill of brand new, mildewing furniture.

So when a man so gorgeous he looked like he'd fallen off a Paris runway offered to buy her a drink, sirens blared.

But his dazzling smile, ridiculous cheekbones and eyes that hummed green immediately silenced them.

Her bought her a drink, admired her scrubs and called her currently flailing medical career "awesome," even though she was working the split-shifts at a near barren hospital in Sioux Falls.

His name was Dean, and he had come to the Dakotas to fly-fish.

Flirting snowballed into touching, and as they left the bar together, Dean twirling her into a dark alcove. He kissed her, luridly and deftly, hands roaming. The lust made everything dreamy and smeared and sticky, and Adele forgot about the freak meteor shower, forgot that she'd been in the town's only bar waiting to be paged back to work drinking colas because she was so palpably lonely.

His hands cupped the curve of her bottom before moving up, sweeping the inside of her sweater. Without warning, he tore away from her, dropping something and smashing it with a violent stomp of his a booted foot. Adele swept her hair out of her face and licked her lips, bewildered. Her subconscious "I told you so" kicked in a beat later when she stared at her demolished Spiderman iPhone and case, and his beautiful face, those lips that tasted like peaches and whisky, twisted into something brutal and ugly. Adele's tennis shoes skidded against the rain slicked ground and her legs were rubbery with terror, but she bolted into the night.

The sky was still awash with meteors, and she had never been more grateful because they illuminated the path out of the darkened narrowed slip between the bar and the hardware store in strobing pulses.

Another flash highlighted a massive car, glittering black and chrome, conveniently parked to block the exit a second before she collided into it, smashing her hand and knee as she thwacked into a fender and window. The pain was unimportant as she tried to skirt around it. When the damp ground didn't offer much traction, Adele, attempted to climb over the hood. A calloused hand clamped over her mouth and another arm snaked around her mid-section lifting her off her feet. Her muffled screams were lost in the now pouring rain and plummeting meteors.

He shook her like rag doll and adjusted his grip so that her nose was covered completely. The lack of oxygen drained her fight within seconds and she fell limp, lungs burningly tight, head spinning. Something cold locked around her wrist and he pressed her against the smooth windows of the car, an elbow pressed firmly against her neck kept Adele from struggling as her arms were handcuffed behind her. She was prideful and stubborn and held onto her fraying composure with the rabid fervor of a junkyard dog until he threaded something that smelled musty and sour over her face; it felt a bit like worn flannel and smelled a lot like a sewer. A dizzying second later, she out of the rain and inside the car, the engine rumbling to life like a nightmare.

Soft, musty vinyl cradled her cheek and her right shoulder ached as she lay at an awkward angle, wet, terrified and _kidnapped_. Before she could even think about fighting to avoid whatever horrors this monster had in store for her, she heard the tell-tale click of a gun and felt its barrel nudging her side. Terror ping-ponged through her like lightning, and she nearly wet her pants.

When he spoke, his voice was soft and earnest, belying that of a kidnapper. "Baby, I don't want to hurt you. I just need your healin' powers, all right? M'brother's sick...I can't take him to a hospital, so I need you to help him. You're a big fancy doctor, right, you got that job in Chicago."

Heart thundering in her ears, Adele began to sob. "I have m-money...you can have it...just let me go."

She jerked at a popping sound before realizing that he was snapping his fingers by her left ear. "Honey, focus. I don't want to harm a hair on your pretty head. I just need you to help my brother...relax, all right?"

Her thoughts were jagged and untrackable, like bees buzzing over garbage. Panic made people stupid, and after twenty years of schooling and studying, Adele knew she was anything but. She drew in a deep breathing, ignoring the shift of the gun in her side. "I'm supposed to be back at work soon...p-people are going to look for me when I'm not there," Adele said, voice trembling. He didn't need to know that she didn't have any people.

"Well, they won't find you, sweetheart." The words were served up as honey but tasted like poison.

As the car speed away from home, freedom and safety, Adele could only hope she'd escape alive.

-S-

The trundling car lurched off the smooth plane of highway, based on the speeds, and onto a bumpy room that had her tumbling around the footwell. A beat later, the car stopped, rain splattered against the roof. Adele jerked away as a hand touched her arm.

"Relax," he barked. He touched her again, gripping her upper arms with both has to lift her out of the footwell and into the seat. After a sharp tug of her damp and frizzed hair, the blindfold fell away.

Adele blinked tearfully into the mottled moonlit interior of the car, trembling even harder as she saw the open landscape of half-dead trees and sun-bleached fields. It was the perfect place for a murder.

Dean sighed next to her before he nudged up the heat. "Look at me, Adele."

She stared straight ahead and wondered if he would kill her there...and what he'd do to her before he did. The years spent in medicine had taught her in graphic detail just how heinous humans could be.

"I'm putting the gun away, okay. Just..look at me."

She turned her head in his direction, gaze lifting as high as his chin.

"I'm sorry for the snatch-n-grab. I needed help, and 'No' wasn't an option."

Ire flashed brighter than the fear. "You're s-sorry for kidnapping me?" Her voice was reed-thin and shaky, but the incredulity was there.

"I need you to patch up my brother, and I didn't have time to talk you into it. Kidnapping is such a harsh word." His smile was mischievous, disarming and not remotely threatening despite how efficiently he'd abducted her and that he was holding a gun.

"What...what's happened to your brother?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Dean's expression darkened. "Look...there's nothing in the world...in this universe that's more important than my brother, and he's really, really sick and he might die thinking that I don't even..." He paused before continued. "I just need you to help him, and I'll bring you right back. I know you think I'm some twisted freak, and I hate that, but I need you to help me."

Adele swallowed, knowing that she wasn't the only one seized by desperation and unparalleled fear. "...if he...has a GSW he needs the ER, I won't be able to help him." Criminals avoided the ER because gunshot wounds had to be reported to the police by law.

Dean's face twisted in a dark configuration that seemed worse than dread and anxiety, and even grief. "He's not shot."

A streak of brilliant gold lit up the sky followed by another, and Dean began driving again, eyes tracking the meteors as they burned through the sky. "Believe it or not, you might be safer with me."

Dean was a personification of contradictions in a handsome and violent package. He'd abducted her with the precision of a secret agent in an action film, but made sure she was warm and comfortable. He handcuffed her for the walk from the car to a derelict motel that Adele suspected was abandoned, but held a coat over her head so she wouldn't get soaked by the storm and escorted her around broken glass and chunks of shattered asphalt in a gentlemanly manner.

"It's just in here," he said, leading her through the door. "Sammy! The cavalry's here, man!"

Adele squinted into the light, her eyes panning the miserable motel room that was all sun-faded moth-eaten bedclothes, cracked windows that spittled the matted, moldering carpet with rain, and a sagging bed tucked into the corner. She could see the broad back of a figure curled on the sagging bed.

Dean uncuffed one wrist and grabbed her biceps, leading her to the foot of the bed. He left her to tending to his brother, rubbing a hand along the bunched broad back, and sweeping back his dark, shaggy hair with the cloth that had been left there. From where Adele stood, she could hear his rapid, spongy breathing and tell that he was in a fair amount of pain, his body was curled around a pillow, the grip tight enough to white-cap his knuckles and cord his muscles. She smelled blood, too, before she ever noticed the stained bandages on his forearm and hand.

Dean was speaking softly to his brother, trying to coax out a response. "Dr. Adele's going to take care of you, man. Just remember what I said. You gotta let it go. We'll figure this out when you're better."

He waved her over and handed her a huge medical bag she recognized as one of the EMT packs with a sheepish shrug. Adele was perversely impressed. Dean had thought of everything.

As soon as Adele got her first glimpse at Sam, she almost understood why Dean had committed felonies to get him care. He was a waxy gray she'd only associated with cadavers, except for his eyes which were sunken and shadowed in dark crimson. He had that haunted look that dogged cancer patients, all blunted cheekbones and husked out posture. Whatever had happened to him, it hadn't been quick. She didn't even have to touch him to know that his fever was dangerously high. But she did anyway, digging into a bag for her stethoscope, thermometer and BP cuff. "Sam...hey, can you hear me? Open your eyes, Sam." When he didn't respond, she grated her knuckles over his sternum. He turned his head away, cracked lips parting to chuff out discomfort. A dozen diagnoses swirled in her mind, and for the first time in hours, Adele wasn't scared. She was enthralled at the mystery and excited to puzzle it out. With a fever of 104.2 and a BP that was in the toilet, she didn't have much time.

She tore open at the buttons of his shirt. "We need to get this off of him. Do you have any ice...we need to get his fever down before he seizes."

Dean flinched. "W-what?"

"He's going to have a seizure if he don't get his fever down."

Adele worked to angle limp arms out of dirty flannel. She felt a tug on her wrist and saw that Dean had locked the other end of the handcuffs to the bed frame and then moved to tug off Sam's boots. She barely paused, struggling with Sam's enormous body. "Get ice...now. I need three packs."

"I have a tub full, we could dunk him in that. It worked before."

Adele shook her head, her dark hair falling into her face. "That could stop his heart. Three packs now, Dean."

A second later, Dean had three plastic sacks stuffed with ice. Adele tried to gesture with her left arm, but the cuff pulled tight. "Put...put one under his arm and behind his head."

She did the same, never pausing to imagine how unpleasant it would be for her fevered patient. Sam made a guttural sound, his body snapping to life as she folding his limp arm over the first pack. She swore she heard a sizzle and saw tendril of steam. "Sam, you're fever's too high, we're just cooling you down. Just try to rest." Sliding into her authoritative work persona made her feel in control and comforted even though this motel was about as far from her sterile ER as she could possibly get.

Sam wiggled on the bed and vocalizing his discomfort. Dean shushed him quietly, sitting on the bed and grabbing his hands to keep the ice packs in place. Adele couldn't help but notice how he obeyed Dean, his weak scrabbling movements ceasing to involuntary shudder of fever. She started an IV, the squeak of latex putting her oddly at ease. Sam's left arm was littered in track marks, sloppy raised ones that were just beginning to bloom in plumes in red and violet. She glared at Dean. "Why didn't you tell me that he's a junkie?"

Anger flash through Dean's face. "Don't you ever..."

Both of them jumped when Sam grabbed Adele's arm and pinned with her glassy, fever-bright eyes and resounding, muddy blue conviction. "I'm...clean..." he rasped. "...m'finally pure."

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She didn't know what it meant, if it were the ramblings of a delirious, possible stoned patient or if it was something far more important. But it was meaningful to Sam, so she humored him. "Go t it. That's really good, Sam."

Sam's lips turned up in the barest of smiles. Adele leaned forward to examine his pupils. If he was an addict, they would be dilated. And they were.

A moment later, she noticed some dried blood on the hand that had braced Sam's lolling head. Gently, she raked her fingers through his long, dirty hair and felt a large knot, crusted over with blood. A concussion would explain his symptoms, too.

Dean stood, bouncing on the balls of his feet with restless anxiety. "I need to...um, make sure we're safe. You need anything you'll holler, right?"

Adele tugged at her shackled wrist. "It's not like I can go anywhere."

Once they were alone, Adele tried to ignore how epically the night had spiraled into chaos on focus on Sam. The sooner she got him stabilized, the sooner, she could leave. She struggled a bit with the cuff, digging into her bag with her right hand to retrieve her medical scissors. She sheared through Sam's soaked undershirt, nipping it at the shoulders to work it completely off. She hadn't expected to find the dark bruises, abrasions and dried blood striping his ribs and disappearing over his back. Trauma over of sickness. "What on earth happened to you?"

Gently, she grabbed his hot forearm, ignoring the stained bandage and heaved him on his left side. Bracing his limp body with her own, she leaned over to examine his back. A quick examination proved that the bruising was mostly superficial, but she worried about a darkened patch low on this right side. It could be a cracked or broken rib or it could be a sign of internal bleeding, which was far worse.

Her patient's eyes fluttered open again, a tear streaming out. Adele took him in, not as a means to her safety or a dirty, drug-addicted patient or a collection of blood and muscle and tissue, but a person with a soul and a heart and family. She sat on the bed, thoughts racing. He'd been beaten or thrown, bitten, possibly drugged and his hand was deeply sliced. The fever could be the result of an unchecked infection from any one of those or something else entirely. She'd seen similar injuries in assault victims. If Dean had abducted her just to get his brother help, what would he do to keep Sam in line? She bent over him to whisper in his ear, the primal instinct to escape choking her. "Sam, I want to help you. But I have to know what happened. Did Dean do this to you?"

"'course not. He's m'brother." Sam whispered.

"You can tell me, it's okay. Maybe we can find a way out together."

Sam regarded her with the same heavy, piercing gaze. "There's never a way out…There's always dying and falling and then it resets...and starts all over again. With the loss and the torture…Jess's gone and Amelia's gone and Bobby's gone…" Sam rambled with the candidness of the delirious, and Adele felt her heart break at the pain etched into every word.

She gingerly began cleaning the bite on Sam's arm, talking as she worked because it kept Sam quiet and calm. As a doctor, Adele could detach with near surgical precision, but everything about this night was rooted in the throes of overwhelming emotion. "I lost someone too, Sam. He was…well, he was my best friend for as long as I could remember. I loved him...a lot. I never had the courage to tell him just how much, and before I could he was gone. I know how lonely it can be. I know how devastating it can be to go on when they never will. But you can't stop living, no matter how much you want to self-destruct."

With the wound treated and dressed, she focused on the nasty laceration on his hand. Suturing it would be difficult while handcuffed, but the wound was too old to do close anyway. She'd just have to clean and bandage it as thoroughly as she could.

"I'm so tired," Sam said, coughing a little. "Tired of it all."

Adele nodded and ignored the lump in her throat. She knew how that felt too.

_TBC_


	3. How'd You Like Them Apples?

**Thanks again for all of the wonderful feedback. I'm blown away. Here's another chapter. Enjoy! **

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**Chapter Three**

Adele had wished she'd paid more attention during her psych rotation.

Because she was nearly 100% certain mental clinicians didn't use words like "nutjob" or "whack-a-doo" but they were the perfect labels for Dean.

He'd left to "make sure they were safe," and Adele assumed from watching "Hawaii Five-0" and action movies that it meant he'd secure the perimeter, board up the windows and stash his boat of a car. But instead he spray-painted strange symbols on the still-broken window, and coated all entrances in what looked like rock salt.

The bond with his brother grounded him, though, and that was reassuring if not a bit heartwarming. He popped in for updates every few minutes and sometimes just to lay hands on him, like a mother would a child. When he barred the door, spread a blanket over Sam's shivering form and hitched himself up on the bed, Adele dropped to her knees and tried to get as comfortable as her shackle would allow.

When she was little, she had an aunt had planted a small grove of apple trees one summer. For one humid summer, an eleven year-old Adele had watered and nurtured those trees, weaving the hose between them, waiting for the year they'd bear fruit.

Seventeen years later, when Adele's aunt was battling breast cancer for the second time, she'd find out in the groves, now tall and spindly, harvesting apples. The Missouri summers had not been kind to the trees and the fruit was worm-infested, misshapen or mushy, but her aunt still harvested the fruit with pride. When asked why, her aunt, whose hair hadn't fallen out, only thinned, smiled in a way that only made her look sicker and said, "Nature won out, just not in the way we wanted, so I'm just making sure the trees will be stronger for next year."

Adele nodded, feeling the gravity of her beloved aunt's cancer far more than she had before. They picked apples all day, and into the night. Adele imagined that she was pulling the cancer from her aunt's body and replacing it with courage and hope and strength. The next morning, she made an apple pie with those same apples, cutting out the diseased pieces and using the what was left. She'd set a piece in front of her aunt next to the joint she'd smuggled in from the city, and said, "Just because something's diseased doesn't mean you give up on it."

The very next summer, the trees produced bussels of pristine galas, and her aunt was cancer-free.

She thought of those apples and her aunt, gathering her courage and stood up to her kidnapper. "Sam's stable now. His fever's controlled. I gave him antibiotics for the open wounds; acetaminophin for his fever. His back and side should be iced for a few more days...I think he's just got some internal bruising. I can't give him anything stronger for the pain because of the concussion. Otherwise, he's okay." She mustered her courage. "I would like to go now. I've done what you wanted."

"No," Dean said simply as he draped a cool cloth over Sam's forehead.

Adele almost cried. "Sam's doing better…and-"

"Do you really think I'd borrow you for a few owies and a fever? I've patched far worse than that on my own. You can go when he's healthy. Does he look healthy right now?" He asked, nostrils flared. "In your esteemed medical opinion?"

Adele didn't need to look. She shook her head.

"Then you stay and take care of him."

"And what if I can't? There's only so much I can do without a hospital. Is this really what's best for him?"

Dean grated his knuckles against his chin, fidgeting with frustration. "You think I don't know that this sucks? Do you think I'm so screwed up that I don't know that _dogs_ deserve better than this? Yeah, I know, I'm not makin' the best case for myself here, kidnappin' you and everything, but I'm desperate, and my brother is dying. I've been seein' it for weeks now, and it nothin' scares me more. Not what's goin' on outside, not the devil himself...except I didn't know that he thought I didn't..." Dean bit his tongue. "If I thought taking him to a hospital would help, I'd go all John Q over the best hospital...but that'll just cause more problems, put Sam in a place that would break him, and he can't take much more."

Adele and Dean's heads both snapped with Sam's direction when he coughed, struggled to breathe the cold, mildewy air. He fell silent just as quickly.

"Have you ever seen a miracle?" he asked a full ten minutes later as they propped Sam up with a few pillows.

"I've sponsored a few of them," Adele countered.

"Ahh, the good doctor is cocky...I like that."

"As much as we can do as doctors, re-attach limbs, transplant organs, there's so much more that's unexplained and unknown. For some doctors, that scares them, but for me it's an encouragement. I see miracles every day."

Dean set his jaw. "Well, Sam is mine. He's the only awesome thing I got left. He's stood by me through everything. He deals with so much, and I know he does it for me. Right now, he thinks that he's not good enough for me," Dean gritted out, "and he can't die thinking that he's anything less than my kick ass, pain-in-the-ass little brother. Will you please...just help me?"

Dean's conviction was genuine. She saw it in the visceral rawness of his words and the pain in his eyes. More than that, it was how he'd left his hand splayed over Sam's diaphragm to monitor his breathing, how he said his brother's name like it was special and prized. Once again, Adele thought about the apples, how maybe the mysterious and dark nature was actually different than it appeared, and how Sam, no matter how sick, deserved a chance. Adele was a doctor and this what she had taken an oath. "Yeah, of course."

-S-

Sam's fever broke in a letting of sweat and a few sighed that actually sounded content. He slept them, deep and healing, while Adele monitored his vitals one-handed and watched the darkened sky for traces of meteors.

Her patient woke up like a ninja, snorting into consciousness, immediately alert. Adele watched him absorb his surroundings as if he'd never seen them before. He lifted his head to look at him, his hair mussed and stringy. "Hi," he croaked out like a question.

Maybe it was the illness, but Sam didn't seem to have the same unpredictable intensity as his brother, and for a brief moment, she wasn't terrified or imagining her own gruesome murder. "Hi."

"Who're you?" He slurred with the voice that sounded like gravel popping until tires. "Where'd you come..." his words died off as he turned his head to cough so hard Adele winced and Sam curled up from it, body bouncing against the mattress. He flopped still when it was over, panting in rapid bursts. He looked at his hands, at the dark blood splattered there.

"You're okay, Sam," she said with a smile. She listened to his chest again, noting the rapid beat of his heart, but also his not-so-clear sounds, which was a little frightening. "Have you had that cough long?"

He shrugged.

"Sometimes when you have a prolonged cough, you can break little blood vessels in your throat. It looks scary, but it's okay. Does your stomach hurt?" She palpated his abdomen, praying she felt no rigidity. She didn't.

"Where'd you come from?"

Adele focused on wiping his hands clean, unsure of what to say. It didn't matter anyway, his eyes trailing down her limp left arm to where it was chained to the bedrail. He made a slight 'tsk' noise. With his long bandaged arm, he swiped the discarded forceps she'd taken out in case she had to suture the cut on his hand, and picked the lock in a modicum of movement. The handcuffed popped open and fell with an innocuous clang against the frame. The wrist was swollen and discolored with spots of blood welling up in a few places.

"Dean." He uttered the word strongly, not in volume but in certainty that his brother was close enough to hear him.

Dean appeared a beat later, and relief washed away the thinly veiled fury. "How ya doin'?" He smiled and it was the first time it ever reached his eyes.

Surprisingly, Sam pushed himself upright, knocking Dean's hand away when he tried to keep him flat. When Sam regarded his brother again, the steely anger was reborn in his features. "That depends...are you kidnappin' nurses now?"

"Doctor," Adele corrected reflexively with a wave of her hand. "I'm a doctor."

Dean had the audacity to look proud of her. "She's a doctor, Sam. And you needed a one; you were in bad shape, man."

"I don't care! You can't freakin' abduct people. 'S'not what we do." He pressed the heel of his head to his eyes, like his head ached.

"Well that pretty much flies out the window when you're in so much pain you pass out, _Glowworm_." Dean said with a significance she didn't understand. "How about you be a good big ass patient, so I can send Adele on her way?"

"'S'not safe." Sam insisted, swinging his legs over the bed. "Someone's probably missing you by now, right?" A brittle hitch of pain caught in Sam's throat and Dean growled in response.

Adele pressed back against the wall, watching as Dean gently grabbed his brother's shoulders to keep him from standing. "Do you have any idea how close you were?"

"To finishing this forever...yeah, I know. We were almost free, and I need to finish it...for..." Bloodshot blue eyes flickered to Adele before settling heavily on Dean with significance. Adele noticed that Sam was becoming agitated, his respiratory rate was increasing and sweat glistened on his forehead. He lifted his eyebrows and uttered the name "Jess" with such reverence, Adele shuddered. Dean visibly flinched, too. "...and Sarah and Jo and Ellen and B-Bobby...and dad and...Mom...and you."

The hand that cupped Sam's shoulder tensed and twisted the dirty fabric of his shirt. "I didn't want it like that...whatever I did to make you feel like you needed to...fall on your sword, man, I'm so sorry."

"I'm pure now, and I could end this...close it off forever. I want it to be over for you.."

"This is one case you'll never win, counselor. Because you're arguing for the death penalty. I would hopscotch through hell in a tutu before I would let you fall again, Sam. I can't do that again."

Sam's chest hitched and he clutched blindly at his brother with a fleeting resolve. "Dean, I can do it..."

"I never doubted you, not once. I thought you knew that. C'mon...lay back. Easy, Sammy, easy…"

"Hurts."

"I know, kid," Dean cupped Sam's cheek. "I know everything's falling apart, I'm not letting it happen to you."

There was something about the bleakness of their tone, the gravity in their words and the rawness of emotional that made Adele tear up, made her forget she was essentially a hostage or a mob doctor, and wonder if maybe life had dragged these two young men into a horrible circumstances. It wouldn't be the first time she'd encountered people imprisoned by the bleakness of life.

Sam tried to lay back, but cried out, shaking his head. "Wait...Dean...stop..."

His head whipped around to Adele and she shuffled awkwardly towards them. "Sam, what's wrong?"

But Sam was apparently beyond hearing or speaking, great pain smothering his breath and snapping his body taut like the string of a bow. He whipped his head back, hands clawing at his chest.

"Okay, Sammy, hang on..." Dean grabbed the hand that was clawing at his chest, and held it tightly, while Adele tried to get him lying down.

The room was too quiet, she thought with a frustrated frown. She was used to wailing of the monitors and the bustle of nurses and doctors, not the panicked chatter of one person, the pounding of rain, and the dragging wheezes of an ailing man. She also didn't have her diagnostic tools to even give her clues of what was wrong with Sam. As Adele leaned over to assess him the best she could, she noticed a change of light in the room. It had been shadowed, only lit by a dented camping lantern and a few candles. Now, it was suddenly imbued with a glittering warm light. She distractedly turned to find out why and she staggered back, pushing it back nearly a foot.

Because Sam was _glowing_. Flickering like an old fluorescent light.

All logical thought and her medical training failed her, and left nothing but a stupefying static and the mounting need to be as far away from this freefalling nightmare as possible.

Adele ran.


	4. Shock Me Twice Shame On You

**Chapter Four **

She ran away from Sam's glowing arms and his guttural sounds of pain, away from his Dean's palpably helplessness and charismatic violence. The rain still pounded the earth but with more mercy than before. Adele had made it passed the black boat of a car and a few paces down the road before she was once again manhandled from behind. This time, Adele fought like a junkyard dog, remembering the self-defense classes she'd taken. She jammed her elbow back at an inward angle, hitting what felt like a rib, and slammed her head backwards until she felt a nasty crunch. The arm loosened around her waist and Adele hit the ground sprinting. A lone meteor-the first one she'd seen in hours-careened through the sky, whirring up the air like a tornado. It zipped over her head, shooting through the trees, the wet branches burning white in its wake, before colliding with the road in an explosion of catering concrete and dirt. The resulting calamity swept Adele off her feet. Shielding her head was the only thing she could do, but it left the rest of her body vulnerable to the blizzarding debris and the jarring impact.

As quickly as it came, it was quiet just the same.

Adele uncovered her head and panned around the deserted freeway. Fire dotted the dark horizon, and the thick concrete had been cratered on impact, its edges thick, puckered and smoldering.

She limped a few feet in deference to her battered, spasming thigh and battere hip, mesmerized by the fact that the fire burned despite the rain, its flames a brilliant white.

Inevitability and curiosity won over. To escape, Adele would have to pass by the meteor and she was a scientist, after all. When she couldn't find Dean in the rain-soaked darkness, Adele jogged forward, gritting her teeth. Fear could heighten senses and Adele felt like prey, hobbling for her life through the dark as the sky fell and and the earth burned and a hunter tracked her. Every sound reverberated through her ears, crisper than anything she'd ever heard. She knew she wouldn't forget the toxic odor of burning ozone and dampness as long as she lived. For a brief instant, she was superhuman.

Out of the darkness of the shattered road arose, not the edges of a meteor but the head and shoulders of a man. The ground beneath him a shattered and cracked in the same of man, not mineral.

His blond hair was impeccably combed. He wore a trenchcoat over a dark suit. He emerged from the dimpled earth and glanced up at the heavens before his eyes locked on her.

She had maxed out on running for her life, fighting death, and now she was gobsmacked, paralyzed in horrific disbelief. The man continued to gape, appearing to be just as stricken as she felt, then he staggered back, loping away.

A wall of leather appeared in front of her.

As sharp and vivid as the world had been a second ago, now it was dim and distant, reduced to sickening hum in her ears and bile in her throat.

Dean grabbed her shoulders. His lips were moving, his voice merely an indecipherable string of white noise.

Shock, she realized, she was in shock.

Sounds clicked back in with a clap of pain across her cheek. "...don't check out on me...Adele?"

She vomited in the road—the mess extinguishing a tendril of white fire. Dean cursed and then comforted. "You're fine, doc, you're fine. Just feel the ground beneath you."

She laughed, and it sounded manic and detached. She was damn sure everything about the world had just imploded around her. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Why's it raining people?"

Dean scoffed, unfazed by his busted nose or the hurricane of humans. "More like trenchcoated douchebags," Dean corrected. "Let's go. We left Sam back there."

Dean tugged her by the hand back to the motel.

She let herself be dragged. "Aliens? Is this an alien-thing?" Adele asked. "Is your brother one of them?"

"You're a doctor, and you're asking me if my Sammy's ET?"

"Cut me some slack here. All of those meteors are people, and your brother just went up like a Christmas tree...I-I can't help him if I don't know everything."

"You said you liked the unknown, right?"

Sam was in an unconscious heap, awkwardly slumped half-on and half-off the mattress when they straggled in, drenched and drained. Dean heaved him back in bed and untangled his spindly limbs while Adele stood in numbly in the doorway.

The seriousness of his condition managed to rid her of the numbing shock. She soon got to work, checked his injuries, abdomen and breath sounds. His fever was bonfire-hot, his vitals were alarmingly erratic, and he was exhibiting stridor, the quality of his breathing had decompensated so much his pallor was darkening from a gleaming white to a dusky gray, with a blue leeching into his lips. Dean had even swiped an oxygen tank and mask, so she put those to good use, hoping to improve Sam's oxygenation. While she worked, Dean made good on his promise to tell her everything. His gravelly voice spun an apocalyptic tale about demons and trials and a quest from God himself that seemed like the perfect YA novel Adele would dive into in the hospital breakroom. She found herself in tears through some of it, wishing, praying and raging against believing such horrors existed, but she knew with unwavering absolution that this man, this dark stranger who'd kidnapped her in an alley, but could show such compassion for his brother and even for her, was telling the truth.

Dean finally closed his mouth, turning away from her to tend to Sam. Adele wiped her face, pressed her head against the soiled mattress and prayed to an angel-less heaven. She needed the strength to continue and to find somehow to save this man who had sacrificed so much to save..._everything._

She had to focus on the science. Whatever was hurting Sam was controlled by man-made medicine, so Adele felt confident that he could be cured.

When Sam glowed, Adele remembered smelling a faint hint of ozone and felt the crackle of energy, like static, like the meteors.

Like electricity.

She gasped and groped for her stethoscope. Dean jerked, lifting his head out of his hands, but keeping Sam's limp one in firm grasp. "What?"

"I need to check something..."

"What?"

Adele ignored him, shoving the cool towels off of Sam's bar chest and replacing it with the end of the device. Holding her breath, she listened to his heartbeat, to the symphony of life.

And Sam's was dreadfully off-beat.

"What are you doing?" Dean hissed.

She ignored him, closing her eyes to focus further. A second later, she was on her feet, swatting at the duffel bag that had propped up Sam's legs. "We need to get him flat...help me, Dean."

"You know what's wrong with him?" She didn't miss the wisp of hope coupled with the tremble of fear in his voice.

"You said Sam had been struck with some sort of...energy after each...trial?"

"Yeah, whammied with white light..."

"That white light screwed with his electrical rhythms. I thought I'd heard something before but I wasn't sure and we don't have the equipment to track it, but I don't need it anymore. Whatever happened to him, when he was glowing, it exacerbated the problem, and I've seen this before. In people who'd been electrocuted. He's tachy...his heartrate is too way fast and and the beat is uneven. It's dangerous, but I can fix it."

Spurred on by answers, Dean gently removed the pillows propping up Sam's upper body, supporting his head when he laid him on the mattress. "Get his belt off...and take off his watch. Anything metal."

"How are going to fix him?"

Adele bit her lip and brandished the portable defibrillator. "I'm going to shock him back to sinus."

The color drained from Dean's face and his jaw plummeting. "No."

"This is the only way."

The grace and intensity of the monster-hunter had returned when Dean moved in front of the bed, fiercely protecting. "You're crazier than I am if you think I'm letting you near my brother with that shock box! After everything he's been through, you're not frying him like bacon! Can't you give him some medication or a shot?"

"Dean." Adele said softly. "This rhthym is throwing everything off. His heart, his breathing. Your brother is very sick...and he won't last much longer. His heart...his entire system can't take this for much longer."

"I'll take him to a real hospital then," Dean hedged.

Adele took another step forward, her eyes never leaving Dean's. "He won't last that long."

The sound Dean made, a broken angry growl crossed with a sob, would be imprinted in Adele's mind forever. But he didn't move, didn't bend until he heard the scraped whisper behind him. "...let'er do it."

A second later, Dean was hovering over his brother. "Sam, no."

A trembling hand pulled off his the mask. "...then...take me t'Crowley...let me...f-finish it." Sam said, face twisted in misery. "I can't keep fightin' this...not even f-for you."

"Sammy," Dean said, his voice tremoring and wet. He turned his head away, shoulders shaking, for a long moment. When he turned back he gently pulled off Sam's watch and then his belt.

A few minutes and one jail-broken defibrillator later, Adele was ready, using the paddles to monitor Sam's erratic heartrate that was worsening by the minute. She had to deliver the current at a precise moment between beats during the safest part of the cardiac cycle. She glanced down at Sam's wasted face and bluing lips as he rocked and arched from the effort it took to breathe and the pain of the a galloping heart. "I'm can't lie to you, Sam, this is the best chance you have, but I can't give you anything for the pain. This is going to hurt...a lot."

"Had worse." Sam whispered. His eyes softened and warmed. "...s'okay." He then turned his face his brother.

"You got this, bitch. Piece of cake, right?"

Sam tried to smile, "pie…piece o'pie."

Adele lubed the paddles, placed them on the pads and watched the tiny monitor, measuring the peaks and valleys. She was sweating and nauseous and terrified. But then Sam released a gurgled scream of pain, toes curling, the rhythm jumped and skittered, and the moment became clear. Adele depressed the buttons, heard the snap of electricity and braced for the violent fling of Sam's body.

Sam cried out, face twisted in pain. "I'm sorry, Sam. You're doing great, just hang on for me." She plied her patient with encouragement as she checked the rhythm. It was unchanged.

"I'm sorry, Sam. We have to go one more time."

Sweat pooled in the hollow of his throat and his head rolled against the mattress. His chest heaved in grating, uneven jerks like each lung was failing at a different pace. Dean nudged the oxygen mask back over his face. Adele waited.

He peeled his eyes open, hands curled into fists, bracing for the pain.

"He's ready. Go again," Dean said.

It was another tense thirty seconds of waiting before she shocked him again.

Sam's eyes rolled back in his head. The waves on the monitor arched up like a rocket and leveled off...into a pristine flatline.

"Did his heart just stop?! Sam, no!" Dean lunged for his brother, not to cradle and rock, like some loved ones did, but to curl his first and deliver a precise and practiced thump to his heart in an attempt to restart it.

Adele cranked up voltage to life-saving levels. "Clear!" He obeyed and she shocked him again.

The electric current snapped Sam's long body taut like a guitar string, his torso cresting off the mattress, muscles stretched in a corded rictus before he flopped still again. His heart wasn't beating and the last breath fizzled out of his lungs.

His chest didn't rise again.

Finality ambled over the derelict motel room like an eclipse, blotting out the light and leaving nothing but dark. Adele froze with a white-knuckled grip on the defibrillator. She could shock him again. She could inject him with adrenaline and epinephrine. With all of the medications Dean had stolen and her stubbornness, Adele could flog his body for another hour and force life back into him. She'd done it before.

Dean was crying, which seemed as improbable as her failure, but Adele didn't care. She dove for the bag, tearing open syringes with her teeth. She injected the epi into Sam's IV with trembling hands and leapt for the paddles, placing them over his pads to check the rhythm. When there wasn't one, she pounded n the charge button with impatience.

"Dean, I need to focus for me. The machine's recharging. It's going to take a few seconds, so you have to breathe for him. Come on, Dean, two breaths."

Dean didn't move, body bowed. The grief pulled ugly, feral sounds from him.

"He's not gone yet, Dean. I promise you he's not. Breathe for him right now!"

"...you can still save him?"

"I promise you, on my life, I will save your brother."

With that, Dean dipped down, sealing his mouth over Sam's and puffed in two quick breaths.

The charge was complete and Adele shocked immediately, barely waiting for Dean back away.

Before she could check for a heartbeat, the battery-operated lanterns tucked in the corners of the room began to flicker, the hastily-barred windows rattled and the stench of sulfur burned Adele's nose. Dean flew to his feet, checking the lines of salt that the raging wind displacing. With a newfound fury, he snatched all of the supplies, not the bag of weapons, but the medical supplies and threw them into the bathroom. A moment later, she was shoved out of the way, and he bodily hefting his brother over his shoulder, with no regard for the IV that tore out of his arm with a small spray of blood, and hauled into the same space.

He grabbed Adele by the collar of her scrubs and dragged her into the window-less room with a reeking, plugged toilet, murky, thick water puddling into the rub and Sam laid out on the rotting floor. He shoved her over the threshold and salted the doorway inside and out. "Something bad's comin' and I'll hold it off with everything I got, but I need you to sponsor another miracle. I need you to save my brother. If something happens to me, call Jodi Mills at the Sherriff's office. She'll take care of you."

He slammed the door before Adele could agree.

But it didn't matter. There was nothing left to do but focus on Sam. If she was going to die, she was going to do it saving a life. Bolstered by the sudden epiphany that maybe she had been meant to cross paths with these brothers, that maybe she could do something remarkably good_, _Adele wasn't scared anymore.

She knelt over Sam, palpating through the darkness to find his carotid. There was still no pulse, so Adele started CPR.

Her world was reduced to compressions and breaths, the knock of Sam's knuckles against the floor as she manually pumped his heart. The IV had been torn out when Dean moved Sam, and there was no light to read the medications, so Adele had to rely on her CPR and the defibrillator.

She heard terrible sounds emanating from the other side of the door: taunting nasty voices, the report of a shotgun, the thrashing of combat and eventually, terribly, Dean's screams.

After she'd shocked Sam for the fourth time, something careened against the wall, sending bits of plaster crunched into her hair.

And Sam still wasn't responding.

Her lungs sizzled breathing for Sam for her long, oily busts of color bled into her vision, and sweat soaked her scrubs. She was engaged in a battle of her own.

Everything was thunderous, from the blood rushing through her ears, to the violence just beyond the door, but she felt movement a jagged twitch of life.

Light exploded into the room, silhouetting a figure too round and short to be Dean. A stripe of light fell over its eyes that were completely and impossibly black. It attacked before Adele could scream.

There was a piercing, gutting pain, a brilliant flare of red and a crack of porcelain tile.

And then there was nothing.


	5. Jailbreak

**Thanks again for the amazing feedback.**

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**Chapter 5**

There was a humid muskiness to the air, one that spoke of neglect and helplessness.

There was pain within the borders of an unrecognizable body, a pervasive weakness and a brokenness that only came from depravity and evil.

There was a heavy cotton muffling thoughts and emotions until were just a disparate notions unable to be connected.

Despite it all, there was a fire inside, one that wanted to escape, to find answers. One that tugged on the wrist restraints despite the pain it caused. One that yearned for freedom.

Adele licked her cracked lips with a desiccated tongue, and stared at the rust-stained drop ceiling. Somehow the place that had nurtured her passion had transformed the place she'd loathed the most. The system had failed her, and her co-workers had committed her to the psychiatric ward.

She was four days post-op after being attacked by...something, running a low-grade fever with stitches that snagged along her torso like a violent railroad.

Consciousness was a cursed thing, but she tried to piece together the bits of information she'd retained despite the narcotics and sedatives and illness that had reduced her memory to that of a Teflon skillet. She'd been dumped at the hospital, near death, wrapped in a blood-soaked blankets. Adele's memory was as fuzzy as the mold spiraling down the far corner or her room, but she knew with every fiber of her being that she had helped someone named Dean, it had been earth-shatteringly important.

Adele tugged at the bindings again, the drugs pulling tears from her eyes. Crying only gave life to the horrible turn she'd somehow taken, fueling her frustration and threatened to tear her stitches, so she forced it down. She almost wished that the nurse would come to administer another dose of drugs that kept her indifferent and pliable.

Perversely, she heard the jangle of keys, the turn of a lock and the rattle of rusty metal before the door opened. Maybe she'd get her wish. An orderly ventured in. He was gruff-faced with cratered acne scars speckling his cheeks. She often awoke in the early mornings to find him in her room leering at her like prey from the corner of her room. Now, he was on his best, non-pervy behavior. "The sheriff's here to see you, ma'am."

_Doctor,_ Adele would have corrected but she'd stopped speaking yesterday.

She'd been visited from by local and state police and even the FBI, but without being able to recall any concrete details, they'd hadn't returned.

Rage twisted nastily in her stomach. Unable to face the idea that another person wouldn't believe her and would leave her there without so much as a second glance, she turned her head away.

She could see the slight shadow of a woman, not that of the broad-shouldered, stone-faced man who'd questioned her with skeptical indifference. Hope sparked inside of her, but Adele smothered it just as quickly.

"Hi, Dr. Zarro. I'm from the Sherriff's office in Sioux Falls. I'm here to ask you some questions about your case."

She closed her eyes against the wetness puddling there, hands fisted impotently at her sides.

"I know a lot of people have been in to see you, and you're in dire straits right now. I will do everything in my power to help you, but I need you to help me first. Can you do..." The sheriff paused and the direction of her voice grew firm with authority. "This is a two woman show. You can close the door behind you."

The door closed with grinding of metal and Adele jerked on the bed, the sound dredged up freeformed memories of fear and blood and beetle black eyes.

"I heard that they brought you in with unexplained hemorrhaging and it was touch-and-go for awhile." The sheriff began. "I heard that they tossed you in the psych ward because you started ranting about monsters with black eyes, demons you called them. The doctors think your psychosis is a side effect of the blood loss and head injury. Is that correct?"

She didn't speak. Talking only got her in imprisoned and sedated.

"I heard that you almost died trying to help two people I'm very fond of."

Adele's eyes snapped open and she stared at the wholesome and blurry face of a petite brunette. Her eyes flicked to her name tag. _J. Mills._

_If something happens to me, call Jodi Mills at the Sherriff's office. She'll take care of you._

"J-Jodi...are you Jodi Mills?" Her voice was wasted from disuse.

The woman squeezed her hand. "Yes."

She exploded with a desperate, fervent plea. "Pl-please get me out. Please. They didn't listen to me...they won't...help me."

Her restraints were already unbuckled. "You're not spending another second in this place. Can you walk?"

She shook her head, tears in her eyes.

"That's okay. We got this, girl power, and all that." Adele couldn't do much but grunt when Jodi draped an arm over her shoulder and helped her sit up and carried her to the wheelchair she'd stashed outside the door.

In a twist of irony, she was grateful for those damned drugs as they blunted the tearing pain that racheted up from the jostling. Without them she would be screaming. Jodi swaddled in her Sherriff's jacket and headed for the door.

"How are we gonna get out of here? They won't let you take me."

Jodi patted her on his shoulder. "This isn't the first time I snuck out of here. And if it comes to down to it, gun trumps pretty much everything."

Their escape was fairly uneventful, except when Adele caught site of her co-worker, the friend who'd helped her find furniture for her place and committed her without the slightest hint of empathy or remorse. She flicked him off as she wheeled past, "I quit."

Jodi drove fast and long, hugging the backroads through the South Dakota state line and beyond. There were many questions to ask: if Sam was alive; if that demon had killed Dean; if the world was ending. Adele wasn't sure she could handle the answers. Exhausted and relishing in her freedom, she slept.

The rocking of the car felt different, no longer a smooth glid over paved freeway but a precarious shuffle. The seats transformed from worn-out, too-cold vinyl to that of damp, firm sinew. She smelled aftershave and sweat and opened her eyes to see curled mussed ends of dark auburn hair. Her heart lurched in her chest and she fisted the flannel, feeling the fast yet perfectly even heartbeat beneath it. "Sam?" she gasped.

Three fingers of the hand splayed against her back tapped reassuringly. "Hey," he whispered so brightly she could hear the smile in his voice. "Hold on to me, okay? You're safe now."

Adele wasn't sure she ever let go.

He carried her somewhere cold and dry and clean with vaulted ceilings and beautifully carved doors. It looked sort of like the Batcave from the Christian Bale era, with a fancy gloom that felt expensive.

She thought Sam was dead. She thought she'd left him dying in that disgusting bathroom and now he was here, putting her in a soft bed and cradling her head as he eased it onto the pillow. In the light, he still looked awful, ashen and ill, but his respirations were even and unhindered, the fever was gone and there was a strength to him that Adele hadn't seen before.

"How are your stitches? Did they tear?" Sam reached from the corner of the bandage that peaked out from her hospital gown before sheepishly pulling back. "Uh, I'm sorry...you can probably...do that."

"I guess it's my turn," she said, aiming for levity and failing. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, all sunken, tearing eyes and matted hair and knew why he was fussing. "They're okay. The drugs're wearing off though."

"We have more," he offered simply.

"I thought I'd killed you." Adele whispered.

Sam offered her a wry smile. "That's not an easy thing to do, trust me."

He sat on the bed and raked his fingers through his hair. In a different world, one without demons and falling angels and nightmarish things, he would be a movie star or a marketing executive or a football player—guy who was so cool and sweet that you wanted to hate him, but couldn't. In this life, he was saddled with the albatross of saving the entire world; it had aged and darkened him in a way that Adele only partially understood.

"They bled you," Sam said a few minutes later. "I'm not quite sure how it works really; there's pain and blood, but no wound. They did it to Dean years ago. The doctors didn't know...and cut him open trying to find the source of it, which just makes things worse. They operate on you?"

"Yeah." She confirmed. "Sam," Adele ventured. "Where's your brother?"

Sam licked his lips and looked impossibly grimmer. "They bled him too."

Adele pushed up on her elbows, ignoring the searing pull of her stitches. "Where is he? Is he here?"

Sam helped her sit up. "He's resting. It's going to take a while before he's on his feet again."

She waggled her hands like an impatient toddler, irritated by her own injuries. "Take me to him."

"Jodi's with him. Just take a minute. Drink some water and relax."

Adele obliged by sipping from the glass of water he pressed into her hands while Sam sat down gently on the bed. "Please tell me what happened? I don't remember it."

After a deep breath, he began to talk. "I'm not sure how any of us are alive. I woke up...and you were bleeding out in the bathtub; Dean in the bedroom. I had to dig through the destroyed room to find him. I called...Jodi and did what I could to keep you both alive until she got there." Sam paused. "Adele, I'm so sorry. We dumped you at the hospital and left. I thought you'd be safe there. I never thought that they'd...treat you like that, put you in that place. I never thought they'd do anything but take care of you. You got dragged into all of this against your will. There's nothing I can say to thank you or apologize."

Adele wanted to be angry or bitter because nothing about her life would ever be the same but she didn't have the energy. "Dean told me about what you guys did and why you were fighting so hard. You both deserve this and so much more. No one knows what you did. I might hate you guys later...when the shock wears off, but...I can deal, I think."

Sam smiled and Adele's head went light at the swoon-worthy surprise of dimples. "You might be as crazy as we are."

With the drugs wearing off, she could remember more: Sam flickering like an old string of Christmas lights; angels falling from Heaven; the demon tearing open the bathroom door. "Do you still..um..." she trailed off.

"Glow like neon sign?" Sam attempted to laugh, but turned his head to cough instead. It sounded terrible, but the part of her that was a physician knew that a broken, gunky cough meant healing. "I still _resonate_...but it's happening less and less; it's not as debilitating as before," Sam admitted.

A glint of silver caught her eye, and she stared at the stethoscope tucked in the haphazardly packed bag of supplies. "Gimme that…"

Sam obliged and lifted his shirt. The bruises were fading into muted yellows and greens, but his heartbeat was a little fast, but robust and even, like a metronome. Adele examined the beds of his nails to check his oxygenation. They were a healthy white; his lips a natural pink.

Adele was relieved and a little proud. "You're getting better," she gasped.

Sam brushed her hair behind her ear. "I had a pretty awesome doctor."


	6. Post-Trauma

**I apologize for taking so long to finish this chapter, and this story. I actually re-jiggered the end of the last chapter, and then decided to re-write the ending. I thought it would be a quick fix, but I actually wrote several drafts before I was finally happy with it. Thanks so much for all the lovely feedback.**

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**Chapter 6**

For someone who had taken the time and finesse to flirt, lure and seduced her into a dark alley, Dean was just as elusive once Sam was out of danger.

Despite the fact that the surgery, the asylum-break and consequent time on the lam had taken so much out of Adele that she crashed for the better part of three days, Adele still noticed. She roused long enough to take pain pills and drink the water that was always next to her bed in a clean glass. She could only take this new world, booby-trapped with evil, in small, measured doses, and she'd asked about Dean then, if he was okay, if he needed her help. Sam, who all but force-fed her soup and applesauce, just insisted he was better or busy with a shrug or a smile.

Inevitably, Adele's body began to rebound, and she could no longer hide in slumber. Sometimes to treat the wound, you had to exercise the muscle and bear the pain. A long shower rid her body of grim and traces of sulfur. For the first time in a long time, she felt human again.

Adele leaned against the nightstand, tendrils of steam wafting behind her after her first real shower in two weeks. The bunker was brimming with life again. Hisses and hesitant "you okays?" turned into conspiratorial laughter and good-natured trash-talking, and it gave the place that probably wasn't supposed to exist the reassuring feeling of home. Adele never wanted to leave, no matter how irrational it was to shack up with your kidnapper and his magical little brother.

Voices filtered in from the hub of the bunker, echoing against the walls of stone and marble. "...asking about you for days. Are you gonna avoid her forever?"

"Well, you're definitely feelin' better. You're back to being a pain in my ass." Dean's voice was weaker, a far cry from intense rumble Adele remembered. "And what's the point of having a super-secret bunker if you don't hunker down in it when the sky is fallin'?"

"I thought we were past this, man. I thought you dried out in Purgatory. You can talk to me. You know that, right? I'm getting stronger every day."

She doubled-taked towards the door, hoping Sam didn't mean it literally.

"Hell yeah, I'm having a drink. I'd offer you one but I know you're mad at me, aren't ya Sammy? You know what Dad said: 'Never drink when you're angry. Just drink'."

Sam huffed, and it was a nasty angry sound. "What do you think, Dean? Do you think after everything that I'd want you to do that? I'm grateful, man, but sooner or later you have to realize that pulling me back, us cheating death over and over, isn't fair and it isn't right, especially when you drag others into it."

Adele moved slowly to the doorway, peering around it so she could see the brothers. Dean was sitting loose-limbed and glassy-eyed at a table in a tiled off-shoot of the kitchen at the end of the corridor. Sam was across from him, ever the opposite, he was straight-backed and composed. Dean rubbed his mouth with the back of a hand that held a highball glass.

"No, it ain't. You work with what you got, the hand you're dealt. Some people say they would do anything for their family...well, I actually backed it up."

Sam flinched and stood, hands lifted in surrender. "I forgot how much a dick you are you when you drink. I can't talk to you when you're like this. Bottom line is you were scared and desperate and grieving, I know, I idled there for a year. You could justify it then, but it's eatin' at you now, and this," he gestured to Dean's demeanor, "isn't gonna solve anything."

His profile was smug and arrogant, and it was only time throughout this nightmare that he had appeared ugly. "I feel guilty, Sammy. I feel horribly, disgustingly guilty because_ I don't feel guilty._ It's like I told you in that church, there's nothing I wouldn't put in front of you."

With that callous confession, Adele knew it was time to go.

-SPN-

The reflection, from the mirror balanced on her thigh, was a shaky projection of her torso and the puckered, discolored scar that unspooled beneath her ribcage. She drew a deep beneath, one that steadied her trembling hands and eased the scissors through the tight row of sutures, snipping and removing the thread with forceps. Even as a doctor, it was unnerving to know that hands had been inside of her.

The medical eye, the incision was healing better than expecting, the stitches coming out with minimal bleeding.

To a woman, it was an ugly disfigurement. Adele steadied her hands that ached to tremble, and she snipped the last two sutures, pulling the catgut free.

The door swung open with a flourish. Soles of well-worn boots slid against the floor with an irate squeak. "Whoa. Uh, sorry, I'll um...come...back."

Dean hunched out of the room without another word. Adele rolled her eyes and removed the remaining sutures. After a smear of antibiotic cream, she re-bandaged the incision and gingerly inched the soft knit pants up, tying them quickly. Adele made quick work of the scanning the room for anything she'd missed. Considering she'd been hauled there wearing nothing more than a hospital gown, there was nothing to take but the clear plastic sack of her bloodstained purse and shoes, which she jammed her feet into and left untied.

The sack crinkled noisily as she shuffled out of the door, scanning the halls of the lair. The ceilings soared upwards of twenty-feet and it gave a prolonged, echoing life to every sound and thought. The long hall of closed, locked doors with cobwebbed knobs opened up, giving way to a massive rotunda stuffed with books from ceiling to floor. Beyond it, there was an inexplicably small kitchen, all counters and hanging pots with a chortling old Frigidaire in the corner. Dean sat hunched a water glass of amber liquor. There was a darkness to his face, one that could be attributed to days of stubble and the mottled purple of deep bruises. The redness in his eyes and the crimson half-moons beneath them spoke of trauma.

They stared at each other for a long moment, the tension swelling and cresting like a tsunami. She searched him for the slightest tell of remorse, but found none.

Dean broke first, tearing his gaze away to drain his glass and crunched on the last shard of ice. "I shoulda knocked first. I gotta say, though, taking out your own stitches, pretty badass."

Emotions stirred within her, despite the meticulous effort she had put forth not to feel anything lest she dissolve into hysterics. This was the man who'd kidnapped her, confounded her, and somehow cajoled her into saving his brother's life while systematically destroyed her own. And he didn't care.

The nascent emotion in her ignited in a flash, and she felt painful explosion in her head, the cracking of the cocoon she'd built over the past few days to protect herself. She ventured passed him towards what she presumed was the exit. The tips of Dean's fingers brushed against her arm. Adele growled, feral and angry, like the demon that had bled her. Adele dropped the bag and shoved Dean mightily against the table. His eyes flared in surprise, but then his entire face crumpled in pain. He dropped his forehead against the stainless steel table in a clatter of pots, curling an arm protectively over his ribs. Adele shuddered at the tearing pain in her incisions, knowing she was probably bleeding, but didn't care.

Sweat bloomed on her upper lip.

"Adele…" he cautioned.

"Where have you been? I've been asking about you for days, Dean. And what, you couldn't bother to pop a head in, let me know that you weren't dead. Offer a 'hey thanks for saving my brother. Sorry you got cut open and committed.'"

"Hallmark doesn't make a card for either of those."

Adele vocalized-a sound of pure ire. "I must have Stockholm Syndrome, that has to be it. That would have to explain why I even care," she ranted. "Sam might be a human lava lamp, but you're the one with the real magical powers. You could probably convince people to do anything with your sad, teary eyes and your speeches about brotherly love and sacrifice. I mean, you blew my life apart, and you don't care right? 'You feel guilty for not feeling guilty.' That's what you said, isn't it?"

Dean averted his gaze. Adele headed for the door.

"I have to go try to put what's left of my life back together." She marched out, indignant and righteous and so angry, there was a subtle tint of crimson to her vision. But she stopped one inch beyond the ornately carved threshold. "Is it safe to for me to leave?"

"What?" he said, distracted.

"The demon that attacked us, is it dead?"

Dean shook his head, still braced against the table, but he somehow found his voice. "He was a minion of Crowley's, one of the strongest demons I'd ever seen. He got away. You…you're probably safer here."

Adele saw it then, the shroud of guilt and the haze of self-hatred that had settled over Dean like a fog. The arm curled over his stomach was holding him together in way that was more than just physical. For once, the doctor didn't offer any comfort.

It was a wicked turn of irony that Adele ended up staying in Kansas with her kidnappers in their secret lair. Albeit this time was it was without the shackles and a different, malignant kind of fear. The outside world was forever changed and even though the bunker was located in a docile stretch of woods where wildflowers bloomed and deer strolled, Adele could only see its newly discovered horrors; the Heaven without angels; the creatures with black eyes that had drained her blood and blissful ignorance. Adele had been sitting in the treeline just beyond the bunker, trying to pretending that she wasn't shaking in the sunlight.

Sam sat down in the grass like a giraffe bending to drink. Thanks to Dean's fussing and her nursemaiding, Sam had regaining a health pink complexion and a good ten pounds from Dean's rib-sticking soups and stews. The extra weight softened the hollows of his face. He was still weaken-kneed and sometimes ran a low-grade fever, but Adele was encouraged and astonished by how far he'd come.

Dean had left a few days after the confrontation, peeling off in the car while Sam and Adele slept. Sam had been livid, but Adele suspected that even he knew he was too weak to follow. He still slept more than she did.

But she treasured his company. He was sweet and thoughtful in ways she assumed his cursed life wouldn't allow. "It's nice out. It's gonna be hot soon," Sam said meaninglessly. "I'm glad you game outside, Adele."

"It only took a week," she deadpanned.

"You've been to hell and back. It'll take some time. You're doing a lot better than most," Sam said softly, curling a blade of grass around his fingers. "There's no rush."

He pulled his phone out, checking it idly. The device had been an extension of his hand since Dean had left, and there was a constant frown to his face, like Sam couldn't settle without knowing where his brother was. It was a heartwarming relief to know that the concern and love went both ways. While it had felt amazingly cathartic to unload on Dean, she worried if she had gone too far.

"Your brother call?" She tried to ask nonchalantly.

"Nah," Sam said, pocketing the device. "He's off the grid."

"What do you think he's doing?"

"Something stupid." Sam raked his fingers through hair. "Or he's driving the Impala. It clears his head and calms him in a way nothing else can. It's his thing."

Adele's lips turned up at the thought of peace derived from one's passion. It had been weeks since she'd treated a patient. She had time to think about patients coming into the ER with unexplained injuries-throat slashings and patients with missing organs or healthy, vital people who'd inexplicably died-and worried that they could now be attributed to the supernatural, and not the unknown.

The grumble of a fine-tuned engine slashed through the quiet. Sam was running up the hill before the tires stopped spinning. Adele stood up and watched as Sam all but tackled his older brother, peppering him with questions. Dean surprised as smile and swatted at his brother who yipped at him like an overeager puppy. They fell in step together, shoulders touching. By the time they reached Adele's side, the bunched furrow of between Sam's eyes had vanished.

Dean was pale and looked impossibly haggard. Still, he wore the exhaustion well, still handsome beneath the stubble that had transformed into a full, reddish beard and the dirty, rumpled clothes. The tops of his knuckles were jaggedly torn and swollen and Adele though she saw a broken finger. "That demon won't bother you again," Dean announced with a growl. "If you want to leave, it's safe for you now." His eyes never lifted higher than her knees. But when he finally looked at her, there were tears glimmering in his eyes, and his chin quivered with visceral emotion. "Adele, _thank you_."

With that, he headed inside.

Heart pounding, Adele turned around, taking in the bright blue sky, undulating green of the forests beyond, and it was only then that she began to cry.

She sank into the grass, sobbing with a fervor and fury that veered towards uncontrollable. It was relief as much as it was fear. Adele hiccupped on her own breath, not knowing how she would press forward in a world that was saturated by evil and even more treacherous than before. It was befuddling and overwhelming.

Panic made her lightheaded and woozy. As she feared she would faint, her lungs cleared and a soothing warmth cascaded through her, settling in her chest. She sniffled, tears streaming down her face, and blinked out at the horizon. Her heartbeat slowed and she sighed, unable to pinpoint the sensation of abrupt serenity. But she felt like she could press on and maybe do more than just white-knuckle it through each day, that she was stronger than she thought. It was then that she realized that Sam had buttressed her in, his arm around her shoulders, another loosely slung over her lap, both humming with light.

_Fin_


End file.
